I manage the website for a local sports team I am on my area. We use a CMS that provides free sites tailored to sports teams, Pitchero, and love it. When you search for “My town rugby” on Google we are the first thing to show up.
This is good, because most of our new players come from them searching online like this. Unfortunately, there are three or four other neighboring towns we draw heavily from and if you search “Neighboring town rugby” we do not show up at all. Any ideas on what I can do to make us more likely to come up on searches like that?
The only think I can think of is to just include as many references to the surrounding towns as I can, but I don’t think that is going to cut it. Also, since we use Pitchero, we do not have access to things like the description meta tag.
You’ve got the right idea. Mention those surrounding towns as much as possible in a meaningful and prominent way, (not just as a footnote). If you could add addresses and phone numbers from those towns, (as a satellite group or interleague for example), even better.
Add a map to your site and include those neighboring towns by geo-tagging them and indicate their proximity and directions to your location.
If the rugby teams in the neighboring towns also have a website, get them to trade links with you so that people searching for them also get you in their search results. It doesn’t have to be a rugby team, of course, just logical. The more sites associated with those areas linking to you and you to them, the more relevant you become in those areas.
I’ve saved the best idea for last. Make separate pages for those towns you want to show up in and assign them each a unique URL, then create an HTML sitemap and have it point to those pages. Your new pages will show up when people search for “neighboring town rugby” and in turn make your site more relevant for those areas.
Thanks. I like the idea of separate pages, but it is hard to make work. We are really one continuous sprawling suburbia and the only way you know you are in a different town is the mailing address. There are not other rugby clubs in them. We are a club that covers this whole area, but it is the town in our name that we show up for.
Your advice mirrors what I was planning to do with the exception of the multiple pages idea. I will see if I can get that to work.
How much access do you have to your HTML? Search for Google Search Engine Optimization Guide (I’m not giving the link here, it’s a PDF) where they discuss what they search for. The title tag, meta description tags, site maps, heading tags and using text anchor tags are key (or seem to be, who knows for sure), so if you can provide pertinent information there you should do better.
Thanks, unfortunately I do not have much access. Google even has a free tool that allows you to make sure everything is properly crawlable and lots of tips, but it is designed for someone with more base access.
That is what puts me in this problematic situation.